Once Works Well was pure technology. Now it seeks merely to divert.Pansy subjects - Verse! Opera! Domestic trivia! - are now commonplace. The 300-word limit for posts is retained. The ego is enlarged

Monday, 5 May 2008

The unforsaken merman

Already I'm cheating on my stated aims. Can swimming crawl possibly snuggle under the umbrella of technology? Belatedly I open the dictionary. The first two definitions are predictable, the third offers a Damascene moment: "The totality of the means and knowledge used to provide objects necessary for human sustenance and comfort." That word objects - surely it has an intangible well as a tangible meaning: goals as well as things? For me crawl works, it's the most effective form of aquatic self-locomotion. The hard bit is learning the breathing. After that it's pure sensuousness. I experimented with my kick this morning: kicked hard and felt the resistance to my arm stroke diminish in the water. Joy.